Former Alexisonfire guitarist/vocalist Dallas Green recently spoke to Spinner.com about the group’s recently announced disbandment.
Green said that he wanted to announce his departure from Alexisonfire 15 months ago, to focus his efforts on City and Colour.
“But when I told the guys that I was planning to leave the band when we finished touring at the end of last year, they didn’t want to say anything because they thought it put a lot of pressure on them to come up with a decision right away about what they were going to do. I wanted to announce that I was leaving the band so that people who maybe weren’t going to come to those shows because ‘I’ve seen Alexis five times, I’ll wait ’til they come through again’ would know that it was going to be the last time you’d get to see Alexisonfire as what we were.”
Green added, “They didn’t want me to leave the band. They said, ‘Why can’t you just keep doing what we’re doing, go back and forth?’ Well, that’s why I’m leaving, because it’s killing me. As much as they saw me always on tour and always putting records out back to back to back, I don’t think they really understood that I was literally never home.”
“When people would ask me when I’d make the decision, I’d joke, ‘When I have a nervous breakdown.’ But I have already had those. I was in the hospital with pneumonia. I’ve lain in the bus crying uncontrollably at night. I was living this unbelievably blessed life but I had no idea how to enjoy it because I was running myself ragged, trying to appease my commitments to Alexisonfire but also trying to appease all the people that were showing interest in City and Colour. It just got to a point when I had to make a decision. A very hard decision. But after 10 years, my heart … well part of my heart is there, but most of my heart is with this.”